February 03, 2004
What The 9/11 Commission Needs To Know About The
EOIR
By
Juan Mann
The
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United
States finished its
seventh public hearing last week in Washington, D.C.
The headlines belonged to immigration inspector
Jose E. Melendez-Perez who testified about barring a
possible 20th 9/11 hijacker at the Orlando
airport in August, 2001, sending him back to Dubai.
The commission also heard testimony
from immigration non-enforcement luminaries
James Ziglar and
Doris Meissner–both disgraced Commissioners of the
now abolished Immigration and Naturalization Service.
But the witness with the most
significant message for real immigration reform did not
speak at the seventh hearing. His written statement was
offered into the record and posted on the Commission’s web
site instead.
If anyone cares to read it, the key
to American immigration policy reform is summed-up in
this
statement by Peter Gadiel—a father who lost his
twenty-three year-old son, James, in the World Trade
Center’s north tower.
Gadiel’s conclusion:
“Our
political system has created a code of immigration law
that is Byzantine in complexity, and thus thwarts
enforcement while favoring any and all immigrants no
matter how baseless their cases may be.”
“It is
clear that there are too many in our government and in
private industry who did not want to protect our
borders. They all share in the responsibility for the
attacks of September 11th and the deaths of
3,000 innocent people, one of whom was my son.”
Amen!
For real immigration reform, all
roads lead to the 1952
Immigration and Nationality Act and to the
federal litigation bureaucracy impeding immigration
law enforcement.
Shortly after September 11, 2001, I
started a
web site warning that America’s deportation system
for illegal aliens and criminal alien residents is
broken beyond repair. This is largely due to an unknown
federal agency: the Executive Office for Immigration
Review (EOIR),
and the neglect of any real
immigration law reform by Congress.
In contributing to VDARE.com, I
write about the
nuts and bolts of immigration law that are simply
not covered in the major media, or even in patriotic
immigration reform circles.
In March, 2002, I wrote a
critique [“What the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS)
Missed - How Alien Terrorists Exploited the EOIR"]
analyzing an otherwise excellent CIS report. ["The
Open Door – How Militant Islamic Terrorists Entered and
Remained in the United States, 1993-2001"]
This is why I respectfully disagree
with another 9/11 Commission witness,
Jan Ting.
His suggestion of putting the EOIR
under the control of
Secretario Ridge and the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) wouldn’t make much difference—as long as
the EOIR
litigation bureaucracy continues to draw breath.
And as the DHS has already
demonstrated, agency reshuffling won’t solve any of the
EOIR bureaucracy’s inherent problems, brought to light
by folks like
Michelle Malkin and myself, who believe that this
illegal alien briar patch should be
abolished completely.
The 9/11 Commission also released a staff statement [PDF]
at its seventh hearing, concluding that the 9/11
terrorists:
Not surprisingly, Americans are
concerned why the
9/11 terrorists were never arrested for any of these
immigration law violations.
But I am here to tell you that,
under the current EOIR Immigration Court process for
deportation—unless these foreign nationals were already
being marked as a potential threat—the EOIR
litigation bureaucracy wouldn’t have slowed them
down one bit!
By fully exercising their
“rights” as illegal aliens in the system, the
terrorists could have been released on an immigration
bond, been paroled into the United States, remained on
our shores, requested political asylum, and continued
their murderous plans while their cases dragged on
unresolved for years.
All of this bureaucratic delay and
federal litigation is a full-employment act for the
robed government lawyers of the
EOIR, its appellate-level
Board of Immigration Appeals, the regional circuit
Courts of Appeals, and even the
Supreme Court. The endless litigation is also a
windfall for
immigration lawyers and the
Treason Lobby itself.
The
Bush administration’s plan to
reward yet more
illegal aliens who are in the same fraudulent and
unlawful
situation as the 9/11
terrorists is a disgrace.
Congress’ refusal to remedy a
ridiculous system that systematically fails to
deport aliens is even worse.
Juan Mann [send him
email] is a lawyer and the proprietor of
DeportAliens.com.
